, on August 4, 2008
“You’re prettier but she’s way sexier.”
Thus started one of the worst back-handed compliments I’ve ever received.
“She just knows how to use what she’s got.
You’re… kinda spastic.”
The speaker was Shane, my rakishly handsome neighbor my freshman year of college.
My roommates and I all had massive crushes on him which he both knew and used to his advantage.
Two of my roommates were quickly out of the game, one by her own volition (she claimed she was playing hard to get but it came across as just not playing) and one was summarily dismissed when it was discovered she was running from the law.
That left my roommate Becky and I to vie pathetically for his affections.
For reasons I can only now attribute to a lackadaisical attitude towards school and an overconfidence in his parents’ ability to take care of him the rest of his life (what a winner!), he was constantly over at our apartment.
And his favorite game was wrestling.
Preferably both of us at the same time.
You have no idea how embarrassed I am to have just typed that so please forgive my idiocy and remember I was young – I was on campus part-time at 15, full-time at 17.
Young girls do stupid things.
Girls Gone Wild is a billion dollar industry based on that one fact.
Not that what I did was Girls Gone Wild worthy.
Wow, I’m just digging this hole deeper and deeper.
It was during one of these epic wrestling matches that he decided to lay that bit of wisdom on me.
My face burned red and I knew I’d lost to the less-pretty but more-sexy Becky.
Sure enough he was soon sampling all the flavors of her Lip Smackers – Dr. Pepper was the clear winner – and I was relegated to pretending not to hear despite the fact that Becky and I shared a room.
But Shane quickly learned that Becky, being more of a buffet fan than a single entree girl, was really more interested in the touchdown than the after party (10 yard penalty for the mixed metahpor!).
Becky moved on to other more evasive men and he and I remained friends.
In fact, when I had a pus-filled infected wound on my finger from – no joke – scraping it on a jagged corner of a formica desk, he was the one who volunteered to drain it for me and then hugged me while I cried for 10 minutes because it hurt.
(Seriously – one of the most painful stupid injuries I’ve ever had!
And I’ve had a lot them.)
One evening we were watching late night infomercials together after we’d both returned home early from bad dates when I asked him to explain.
He was brutally honest.
“You have no sense of self, no confidence.
You have a great body but no idea how to use it.
You flail.
When you try and act sexy, it’s almost comical but in a painful way.
You even hug self-consciously.”
“I what?!?”
“I don’t know how you do it but you do.”
This was the memory that came back to me after reading the
The commenters were going back and forth about whether the men in the poll were lying through their British teeth when they said they most liked a “size 12” (size 8 US) woman and yet voted for bombshell Kelly Brooke (the only size 12 thing about her are her boobs) as their ideal woman.
And then one of her commenters, whom we also see ’round these parts, Tokaiangel (hi girl!!) wrote: “I honestly think confidence is more important than any of it.”
And after my experience with Shane I have to agree.
Since body confidence comes from trusting and loving your body, it would make sense that I had none of it.
Especially at that time in my life.
I was geeky and weird.
Way too transparent.
Intellectually smart but dumb in common sense.
So how does one get it if you are not born with it?
If I were awesome, I’d do l, and come up with an inspiring bulleted list – with a picture of someone jumping! – of five easy steps to loving the skin your in.
Wait, I think I just quoted a commercial too!
Do I get bonus points for that Cranky?
But the truth is I still don’t know.
I was discussing my obssession with those
with my therapist the other day when she made an interesting point.
She asked, “Why do those 10 pounds matter to you?
Losing 10 pounds puts your BMI into the unhealthy range.
Why would you want that?”
I answered, “Because people like me better when I’m that skinny.
I get more compliments.
People are nicer to me.
People trust me more.
I swear I even get more Google hits on those days.”
She shot back, “Maybe it’s because you’re more confident and other people pick up on it.
Maybe it has nothing to do with your weight and everything to do with how you feel about yourself.”
The light went on.
So now I need to figure out a way, besides losing weight, to feel confident in myself.
I’ve made a good start with aging – amazing what getting older can do – and also dancing, kick boxing, and running but I’m not there yet.
Help me out – how have you learned to love your body?
Bonus points for photoshopped aspirational pics.
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Buy The Great Fitness Experiment Book on AmazonSelected Quotes about Love
I love this game, I love this sport, I love this league. Why don't I get my own team? (English Premiership football club) -- Roman
Abramovich
Think about a woman. Doesn't know you're thinking about her. Doesn't care you're thinking about her. Makes you think about her even more.
-- Martin Sage and Sybil Adelman
We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited. -- Alfred Adler
Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each include the other, each is enriched by the other. -- Felix Adler
In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person. -- Margaret Anderson
Love and kindness are never wasted. They always make a difference. They bless the one who receives them, and they bless you, the giver. -- Barbara De Angelis
Love is a choice you make from moment to moment. -- Barbara De Angelis
True love brings up everything - you're allowing a mirror to be held up to you daily.
-- Jennifer Aniston
Religion it self is nothing else but Love to God and Man. He that lives in Love lives in God, says the Beloved Disciple: And to be sure a Man can live no where better. -- It is most reasonable Men should value that Benefit, which is most durable. Now Tongues shall cease, and Prophecy fail, and Faith shall be consummated in Sight, and Hope in E but Love remains. Love is indeed Heaven upon E since Heaven above would not be Heaven without it: For where there is not L there is Fear: But perfect Love casts out Fear. And yet we naturally fear most to offend what we most Love. What we Love, we???ll H what we Love, we???ll T and what we Love, we???ll serve, ay, and suffer for too. If you love me (says our Blessed Redeemer) keep my Commandments. Why? Why then he???ll L then we shall be his F then he???ll send us the C then whatsoever we ask, and then where he is we shall be also, and that for ever. Behold the Fruits of L the Power, Vertue, Benefit and Beauty of Love! L and when it prevails in us all, we shall all be Lovely, and in Love with God and one with another.
Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
-- Jean Anouilh
If you deeply appreciate and love what creative people do and how they think, which is usually in unpredictable and irrational ways, then you can start to understand them. And finally, you can see inside their minds and DNA. -- Bernard
Being always overavid, I demand from those I love a love equal to mine, which, being balanced people, they cannot supply. -- Sylvia Ashton-Warner
Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. -- St. Augustine
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
-- Jane Austen
Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
-- Jane Austen
I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman' and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.
-- Jane Austen
I pay very little regard ... to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.
-- Jane Austen
The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's.
-- Jane Austen
Friendship is the finest balm for the pangs of despised love. -- Jane Austen
One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it unless it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering. -- Jane Austen
What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork. -- Pearl Bailey
The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love. -- Pearl Bailey
The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment. -- James Baldwin
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a growing up. -- James Baldwin
Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. -- James Baldwin
Self-love has very little to do with how you feel about your outer self. It's about accepting all of yourself. You've got to learn to accept the fool in you as well as the part that's got it goin' on. -- Tyra
I love the confidence that makeup gives me. -- Tyra
Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
-- Lynda Barry
Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
-- John Barrymore
Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock. -- John Barrymore
When we understand that man is the only animal who must create meaning, who must open a wedge into neutral nature, we already understand the essence of love. Love is the problem of an animal who must find life, create a dialogue with nature in order to experience his own being. -- Ernest Becker
If you really love property, and buildings, lifestyles and how people live, that's a good reason for going into development. -- Sarah
Love's a weird one, isn't it? I've never told my husband Graham that I love him. He's never told me either. I think it started as a bit of a joke. We just decided never to say it. -- Sarah
The opposite of love is not to hate but to separate. If love and hate have something in common it is because, in both cases, their energy is that of bringing and holding together???the lover with the loved, the one who hates with the hated. Both passions are tested by separation. -- John Berger
A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. -- Ingrid Bergman
All the pictures that hung in my memory before I knew you have faded and given place to our radient moments together. Now I cannot live apart from you...Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me. -- Sarah Bernhardt
A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love. -- Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage. -- Ambrose Bierce
True love is night jasmine, a diamond in darkness, the heartbeat no cardiologist has ever heard. It is the most common of miracles, fashioned of fleecy clouds -- a handful of stars tossed into the night sky. -- Jim Bishop
Love is the immortal flow of energy that nourishes, extends and preserves. Its eternal goal is life. -- Smiley Blanton
Love at first sight i it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle. -- Amy Bloom
As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is my destiny and the meaning of my life. -- Napoleon Bonaparte
...if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody. -- Alain de Botton
Sometimes when you look back on a situation, you realize it wasn't all you thought it was. A beautiful girl walked into your life. You fell in love. Or did you? Maybe it was only a childish infatuation, or maybe just a brief moment of vanity.
-- Henry Bromel
The best proof of love is trust. -- Joyce Brothers
Love is the wild card of existence. -- Rita Mae Brown
Whoso loves, believes the impossible. -- Elizabeth Barret Browning
Love does not die easily. It is a living thing. It thrives in the face of all of life's hazards, save one -- neglect. -- James D. Bryden
A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love. -- Pearl S. Buck
I love people. I love my family, my children . . . but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up. -- Pearl S. Buck
The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration. -- Pearl S. Buck
Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold
When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold
Absence is to lov it extinguishes the small and kindles the great. -- Roger de Bussy-Rabutin
P but is it not Tennyson who has said: "'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have lost at all"? -- Samuel Butler
You call it madness, but I call it love. -- Don Byas
Relationships: Treat yourself the way you want to be treated by others .. love yourself and you will be loved. -- Rhonda
I truly feel that there are as many ways of loving as there are people in the world and as there are days in the life of those people. -- Mary S. Calderone
I have a clear conscience because I'm dealing with my life and I'm loving my life today. -- Naomi
The true beloveds of this world are in their lover's eyes lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory. -- Truman Capote
Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to think they are in love with somebody. -- Willa Cather
Where there is great love, there are always wishes. -- Willa Cather
A relationship is like a rose, How long it lasts, Love can erase an awful past, Love can be yours, you' To feel that love, it makes you sigh, To have it leave, you' You hope you've found that special rose, 'Cause you love and care for the one you chose. -- Rob Cella
The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. -- Allan K. Chalmers
For there is one thing I can safely say: that those bound by love must obey each other if they are to keep company long. Love will not be co when mastery comes, the God of love at once beats his wings, and farewell -- he is gone. Love is a thing a women naturally desire liberty, and not to be con and so do men, if I shall tell the truth. -- Chaucer
Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.
-- Anton Chekhov
The cure for all ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows and the crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word 'love.' It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life. -- Lydia Maria Child
Love is the big booming beat which covers up the noise of hate.
-- Margaret Cho
All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love And feed His sacred flame. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sympathy co but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Friendshi but love in friendship - never. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life. -- Joseph Conrad
Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.
-- Michael Masser and Linda Creed
It’s always the little decisions that have the biggest impact. Do it because you love it. Then it’s not a job. I’m a geek. I love technology. I would be online working with technology regardless of what my day job is. -- Mark
We need not think alike to love alike. -- Francis David
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
-- Bette Davis
Absence is to love
it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great. -- Comte DeBussy-Rabutin
Love builds bridges where there are none. -- R. H. Delaney
I know that I can give love for a minute, for a day, for a month, but I can give and I'm very happy to do that and I want to do that. -- Princess
The kindness and affection from the public have carried me through some of the most difficult periods, and always your love and affection have eased the journey. -- Princess
I think the biggest disease the world suffers from in this day and age is the disease of people feeling unloved. -- Princess
Who dares deny that this is true: The whole is more than all its parts? A whole love than divided love, Or than half love from fifty hearts? Yet who dare either this deny: The part is more than is the whole? That treasures halved with one dear love Are more than double to the soul? -- Arthur Dillon
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known. -- Walt
We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end. -- Benjamin Disraeli
Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines, and silver hooks. -- John Donne
You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love. -- Henry Drummond
Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves, without any insistence that they satisfy you. -- Wayne
The pleasures of love are pains that become desirable, where sweetness and torment blend, and so love is voluntary insanity, infernal paradise, and celestial hell -- in short, harmony of opposite yearnings, sorrowful laughter, soft diamond. -- Umberto Eco
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love. -- Albert Einstein
How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? -- Albert Einstein
Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind. -- TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
Just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to be involved with them. Love is not a bandage to cover wounds.
-- Hugh Elliott
The art of love ... is largely the art of persistence. -- Albert Ellis
He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Religion is to do right. It is to love, it is to serve, it is to think, it is to be humble. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
When love is in excess it brings a man no honor nor worthiness.
-- Euripides
The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, to show them we love them not when we feel like it, but when they do. -- Nan Fairbrother
Gravity. It keeps you rooted to the ground. In space, there's not any gravity. You just kind of leave your feet and go floating around. Is that what being in love is like?
-- Josh Brand and John Falsey
The two most misused words in the entire English vocabulary are love and friendship. A true friend would die for you, so when you start counting them on one hand, you don't need many fingers. -- Larry
A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how." -- Victor Frankl
Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness. -- Sigmund
Infantile love follows the principle: "I love because I am loved." / Mature love follows the principle: "I am loved because I love." / Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." / Mature love says: "I need you because I love you." -- Erich Fromm
Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.' -- Erich Fromm
In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two. -- Erich Fromm
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
-- Robert Frost
Earth's the right place for love. I don't know where it's likely to go better. -- Robert Frost
Love is staying up all night with a sick child -- or a healthy adult. -- Sir David Paradine Frost
Hatred ever kills, love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred. -- Mohandas K. Gandhi
Where there is love there is life. -- Mohandas K. Gandhi
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS. -- Mahatma
Where there is love there is life. -- Mahatma Gandhi
For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul. -- Judy Garland
This really is a merger of equals. I wouldn't have come back to work for anything less than this fantastic opportunity. This lets me combine my two great loves - technology and biscuits. -- Lou
Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit. -- Kahlil Gibran
We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace. -- William Ewart Gladstone
To be loved for what one is, is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him, their own selves, their version of him. -- Goethe
We are shaped and fashioned by what [whom] we love. -- Johann von Goethe
Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, it can dwell in no other atmosphere. -- Emma Goldman
Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.
-- Rabbi Julius Gordon
To love what you do and feel that it matters how could anything be more fun? -- Katharine
Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so. -- David Grayson
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
-- Matt Groening
[W]e all need friends with whom we can speak of our deepest concerns, and who do not fear to speak the truth in love to us. -- Margaret Guenther
But one of the attributes of love, like art, is to bring harmony and order out of chaos, to introduce meaning and affect where before there was none, to give rhythmic variations, highs and lows to a landscape that was previously flat. -- Molly Haskell
It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. -- Nathaniel Hawthorne
There is only one terminal dignity -- love. -- Helen Hayes
I'm not putting myself up as the epitome of virtue. I certainly am living a non-traditional life. But it is also a loving life and a very supportive one. I think that both in this, and the previous relationship, I think that I've been doing the best I can. -- Hugh
Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. -- Robert Heinlein
When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. -- Jimi Hendrix
Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then. -- Katharine Hepburn
Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get--only with what you are expecting to give--which is everything. -- Katharine Hepburn
If I know what love is, it is because of you. -- Herman Hesse
You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else. -- Hermann Hesse
Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important. -- Lisa Hoffman
Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are. -- Houssaye
Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
-- Victor Hugo
Life is the flower for which love is the honey. -- Victor Hugo
The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves. -- Victor Hugo
The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved. -- Victor Hugo
Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much. -- Zora Neale Hurston
Some relationships start with fights ... But, usually only in romantic comedies. Life's not the movies.
-- Takayuki Ikkaku
Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart. -- Washington Irving
'Light fuse and get away' may work for a Roman candle, but not so much for the wrath of a woman scorned.
-- J. Jacques
Love can sometimes be magic. But magic can sometimes...just be an illusion. -- Javan
Love doesn't make the world go ' love is what makes the ride worthwhile. -- Franklin P. Jones
Love is everything it's cracked up to be???It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.
-- Erica Jong
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. -- Martin Luther King, jr.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend. -- Martin
Luther King, Jr.
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. -- Martin
Luther King, Jr.
Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye. -- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
-- Carl Jung
Where love rules, there and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other. -- Carl Jung
A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear. -- Herb
Have you ever been at sea in a dense fog, when it seemed as if a tangible white darkness shut you in and the great ship, tense and anxious, groped her way toward the shore with plummet and sounding-line, and you waited with beating heart for something to happen? I was like that ship before my education began, only I was without compass or sounding line, and no way of knowing how near the harbor was. "Light! Give me light!" was the wordless cry of my soul, and the light of love shone on me in that very hour. -- Helen Keller
The sage said, "The best thing is not to hate anyone, only to love. That is the only way out of it. As soon as you have forgiven those whom you hate, you have gotten rid of them. Then you have no you just forget. -- Hazrat Inayat Khan
Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself. -- Sren Kierkegaard
But I think the most important thing is to find the love of your life and have fun in love. And enjoy and appreciate what comes to you. -- Heidi
The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed. -- J. Krishnamurti
We provide food that customers love, day after day after day. People just want more of it. -- Ray
If you work just for money, you'll never make it, but if you love what you're doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours. -- Ray
We are the leaves of one branch, the drops of one sea, the flowers of one garden. -- Jean Baptiste Henry Lacordaire
Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us. -- HH the Dalai Lama
When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. -- HH the Dalai Lama
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. -- Dalai
When we feel love and kindness towards others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace. And there are ways in which we can consciously work to develop feelings of love and kindness. -- Dalai
Fall not in love, it will stick to your face.
-- National Lampoon
If you have love in your life it can make up for a great many things you lack. If you don't have it, no matter what else there is, it's not enough. -- Ann Landers
Being deeply loved by someon loving someone deeply gives you courage. -- Lao-Tzu
Love doesn't sit there like a stone. It ha remade all the time, made new. -- Ursula LeGuin
Love doesn't just si it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. -- Ursula K. LeGuin
Love doesn't just si it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. -- Ursula K. LeGuin
Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear. -- John Lennon
Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know that we are not alone. -- C. S. Lewis
Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me. -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The best love affairs are those we never had. -- Norman Lindsay
If I am not worth the wooing, I am surely not worth the winning. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
published in "The Seaside and the Fireside" -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. -- George MacDonald
To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. To just give. That takes courage, because we don't want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt.
-- Madonna
No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. -- Nelson
Love doesn't sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread: remade all the time, made new. -- Og
Do all things with love. -- Og Mandino
Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your good health has vanished. -- Og Mandino
This was love at first sight, love everlasting: a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected - in so far as it could be a matter of it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life. -- Thomas Mann
He drew a circle that shut me out-- Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in. -- Edwin Markham
You don't have to love your clients like they're your own children, but it helps. After all, you are going to have to be like a mother to them. Pick them up when they fall down, let them cry on your shoulder, hold the tissue when they blow their nose. -- Max
A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her ... but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
I learnt that men were moved by a savage egoism, that love was only the dirty trick nature played on us to achieve the continuation of the species. -- W. Somerset Maugham
On reflection, one of the things I needed to learn was to allow myself to be loved. -- Isha McKenzie-Mavinga
Is love supposed to last throughout all time, or is it like trains changing at random stops. If I loved her, how could I leave her? If I felt that way then, how come I don't feel anything now?
-- Jeff Melvoin
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
-- H. L. Mencken
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia -- to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess. -- H. L. Mencken
It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say. -- Thomas Merton
I am radically, insanely, nutty in love with Jesus! He has set me free! -- Joyce
Could you imagine how horrible things would be if we always told others how we felt? Life would be intolerably bearable.
-- Randy K. Milholland
For those of us who have lost loved ones in their prime - as I did when my father and other relatives succumbed - even one of those years would have been a precious gift. -- Michael
I love humanity but I hate people. -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
Life is a quest and love a quarrel ... -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
I loved this country where everyone greets passers-by and opens his door wide. Looking at America, every voyager has the eyes of Christopher Columbus. -- Francois
Mitterrand
The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it... you and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough. -- George Moore
Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
-- Jeanne Moreau
Age does not protect you from love, but love to some extent protects you from age. -- Jeanne Moreau
Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.
-- Toni Morrison
Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
-- Iris Murdoch
We can only learn to love by loving.
-- Iris Murdoch
...the more the soul knows, the more she loves, and loving much, she tastes much. -- W. H. Murray
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. -- Pablo Neruda
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do????
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies o it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings. -- Anais Nin
The only abnormality is the incapacity to love. -- Anais Nin
Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity. -- Henri Nouwen
To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to to hold it against your bones knowing your ow and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. -- Mary Oliver
If there is lots of love in your life, if your family is close or your marriage is happy, you will tell me with pride and respect and gratitude how rich you feel, rich with love. -- Suze
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A me And love is a thing tha And I am Marie of Romania.
-- Dorothy Parker
Once when I was young and true, Someone left me sad- Broke my
And that was very bad. Love is for unlucky folk. Love is but a curse. Once there was a heart I And that, I think, is worse. -- Dorothy Parker
Love vanquishes time. To lovers, a moment can be eternity, eternity can be the tick of a clock. -- Mary Parrish
Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.
-- Blaise Pascal
The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of. -- Pascal
Your enthusiasm will be infectious, stimulating and attractive to others. They will love you for it. They will go for you and with you. -- Norman
Vincent Peale
Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.
-- M. Scott Peck
Although the act of nurturing another's spiritual growth has the effect of nurturing one's own, a major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved. -- M. Scott Peck
Neve but see that thou lovest what is lovely.
-- William Penn
Those who love d they may die of old age, but they die young. -- Sir Arthur Pinero
At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. -- Plato
We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists ... in the loved one, perfection. -- Sidney Poitier
In reality, in love there is a permanent suffering which joy neutralizes, renders virtual, delays, but which can at any moment become what it would have become long earlier if one had not obtained what one wanted, atrocious. -- Marcel Proust
Where there is love, there is pain. -- Spanish proverb
It is remarkable how similar the pattern of love is to the pattern of insanity. -- The Matrix - Revolutions
For one human b that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most di the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. -- Rainer Maria Rilke
I love the market, it is my work, my play and my life. -- Rene
The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love. -- Tom Robbins
There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not. -- La Rochefoucauld
True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen. -- La Rochefoucauld
I treasure the company of women. I love their laughter. I am astounded by their ability to keep communities together around the world. -- Anita
When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.
-- J. K. Rowling
Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love, though I'd stepped in it a few times.
-- Rita Rudner
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. -- Rumi
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
-- Bertrand Russell
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. -- Bertrand Russell
When I say I love Eastland, it sounds preposterous -- a man who brutalizes people. But you love him or you wouldn't be here. You're going to Mississippi to create social change -- and you love Eastland in your desire to create conditions which will redeem his children. Loving your enemy is manifest in putting your arms not around the man but around the social situation, to take power from those who misuse it -- at which point they can become human too. -- Bayard Rustin
Tell me who admires you and loves you, and I will tell you who you are. -- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves. -- Saint Francis de Sales
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. -- George Sand
Love is on the lover, but not his love, is deceived. -- George Santayana
If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth. -- Mitsugi Saotome
I love Brian Piccolo, and I'd like all of you to love him. When you hit your knees to pray tonight, please ask God to love him, too. -- Gale Sayers
There's a lot to be said for self-delusionment when it comes to matters of the heart.
-- Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
-- Charles M. Schulz
The man who does not work for the love of work but only for money is not likely to make money nor find much fun in life. -- Charles
Love means never having to say you're sorry. -- Erich Segal
True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked. -- Erich Segal
Who can give law to lovers? Love is a greater law to itself. -- Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus)
But love is blind and lovers cannot see The pretty follies th For if they could, Cupid himself would blush To see me thus transformed to a boy.
-- William Shakespeare
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments: love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds.
-- William Shakespeare
Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.
-- William Shakespeare
Love all, trust a few. -- William Shakespeare
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting. -- William Shakespeare
O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love... 'Tis but thy n What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet... -- William Shakespeare
'Tis the most tender part of love, each other to forgive.
-- John Sheffield
Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the heights of love's rare universe, Are chains of lead around its flight of fire-- I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire. -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
The future may be made up of many factors but where it truly lies is in the hearts and minds of men. Your dedication should not be confined for your own gain, but unleashes your passion for our beloved country as well as for the integrity and humanity of mankind. -- Li
A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat. -- Logan Pearsall Smith
This is my beloved and this is my friend. -- Song of Solomon
One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
-- Sophocles
I am a hero worshiper. I love the number one tennis player. I love the number one baseball player. I want to see those records broken. -- Martha
All the things I love is what my business is all about. -- Martha
Love isn't a decision. It's a feeling. If we could decide who we loved, it would be much simpler, but much less magical.
-- Trey Parker and Matt Stone
To fall in love is easy, even to remain in our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be. -- Anna Louise Strong
To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.
-- Karen Sunde
...love from one being to another can only be that two solitudes come nearer, recognize and protect and comfort each other. -- Han Suyin
To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.
-- Anne-Sophie Swetchine
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another. -- Jonathan Swift
Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place.
I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever. -- Amy Tan
Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go. -- Mother Teresa
There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation in this world than for bread. -- Mother
The greatest
in is love. -- Mother
The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted. -- Mother
Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go. -- Mother
Jesus said love one another. He didn't say love the whole world. -- Mother
Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor... Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God' kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting. -- Mother
The success of love is in the loving - it is not in the result of loving. -- Mother
If you judge people, you have no time to love them. -- Mother Theresa
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
-- Henry David Thoreau
There is no remedy for love but to love more. -- Henry David Thoreau
The first duty of love is to listen.
-- Paul Tillich
The first duty of love is to listen. -- Paul Tillich
If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question? -- Lily Tomlin
I just love it when people say I can't do it, there's nothing that makes me feel better [than proving them wrong] because all my life, people have said that I wasn't going to make it. -- Ted
So people actually, if they want to know, &What is God like?& they would have to look at you and me and see us as being compassionate, because God is compassionate, as being loving, because God is loving. -- Desmond
After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about E it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her. -- Mark Twain
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century. -- Mark Twain
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century. -- Mark Twain
Nonviolence is the answer for the questions of our time. Love will conquer evil every time. -- James
Love is blind, but friendship closes its eyes. -- Unknown
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
-- Peter Ustinov
Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it. -- Joan Vinge
To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.
-- David Viscott
Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... -- Rose Walker
Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
-- Alan Watts
The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say, "What are you going through?" -- Simone Weil
A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain. -- Jessamyn West
Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing. -- Elie Wiesel
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. / The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. / The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. / And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. -- Elie Wiesel
All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
All love that has not friendship for its base, / Is like a mansion built upon the sand. -- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
In the long run all love is paid by love, Though undervalued b The great eternal Government above Keeps strict account and will redeem its worth. G d So beautiful a thing was never lost In the long run. -- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible. -- Oscar Wilde
If what you are selling is energy, charisma, and enthusiasm, there is no competition because most others are selling things that are lifeless, loveless, and dull. -- Stuart
When you pass people on the street, mentally reach out and touch them in the heart and silently project the though &love&, or project admiration for them even though you don't know them. -- Stuart
When you concentrate on people and you provide things for them, you are falling in love with them. Choose love to make your life abundant. -- Stuart
We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present. -- Marianne
Williamson
Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here. -- Marianne
Williamson
I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear. -- Oprah
I grew up in the country, which is probably why I'm so attached to the land. I love it. I love the lay of the land. I love walking the land. And I love knowing that it's my land. -- Oprah
Material success is rewarding and a lot of fun, but it's not the most important thing in my life because I know when this is all over, the Master isn't going to ask me how many things I owned or how many television shows I did. I think the questions will be, What did I do to make a difference? Did I learn to live with love in my heart? -- Oprah
In the absence of love, there is nothing worth fighting for. -- Elijah Wood
The little unremembered acts of kindness and love are the best parts of a person's life. -- William Wordsworth
How can anyone be against love? -- Malcolm
God is not solitude, but perfect communion. For this reason the human person, the image of God, realizes himself or herself in love, which is a sincere gift of self. -- Pope
Benedict XVI
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